Benefits of small-scale farming (2023)

By Peter M. Rosset

For more than a century, leading economists in both capitalist and socialist countries confidently and enthusiastically predicted the end of the small family farm. Small farms have been repeatedly labeled as backward, unproductive and inefficient, an obstacle to be overcome in the process of economic development. The American model of large-scale mechanized corporate agriculture is presented as the best, if not the only, way to efficiently feed the world's population.

Whether smallholdings are worth preserving, whether indeed a smallholding model of rural development makes more sense than the large-scale, mechanized, chemical-intensive, business-dominated, socially exclusive model for which business is usual, so now is the time to act. The first point worth noting is that while small farmers have been driven out of rural America by the millions and we have seen similar, albeit smaller, rural-urban migration in the Third World, the fact is that family farmers still persist in the region. US and continue to be numerically dominant. In the Third World they are essential for the production of staple foods. The prediction of their demise remains premature, although their numbers have declined substantially and they face new threats to their livelihoods on an unprecedented scale.

The second point is that small farms are nowhere near as unproductive or inefficient as many would have us believe. Peasants doggedly clung to the land, despite more than a century of harsh policies that undermined its economic viability.

The third point is that small rural properties have multiple functions that benefit both society and the biosphere, and that contribute much more than a given product. These multiple and beneficial roles need to be valued and seriously considered before we happily accept another round of anti-small farm policies, this time at the level of the global economy.

I'm not the only one who talks about the value of small properties and calls for a policy change to take advantage of their potential dynamism. The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Small Farms Commission released a landmark report in 1998 titled "It's Time to Act." What the USDA calls the public value of small farms includes: Diversity; environmental benefits; Community empowerment and responsibility; Places for families; Personal connection with food; and Economic Fundamentals. The USDA Commission is calling for a change in policies that have favored large, corporate-style farms for so long, at terrible cost to rural communities and the environment.

To address today's challenges in agriculture, we need to approach agriculture and land in a broader context, integrating multiple roles (economic, food production, nature and land management, employment, etc.). Sustainable agriculture and land use is not just a means of obtaining more food and income in socially acceptable ways that do not degrade the environment. Instead, it has a global impact on communities, environments and consumers. Sustainable land use is an opportunity to improve the quality of the environment, including its physical (greater soil fertility, better air and water quality), biological (healthier and more diverse animal, plant and human populations) aspects. and social. , economic and institutional . (greater social equity, cohesion, peace/stability, well-being). Land is not just a resource to be exploited, but a crucial vehicle for achieving better socio-economic, biological and physical environments. Concretely, paying attention to the multiple functions of agriculture and land use, all economic, social and environmental functions of agriculture, at various levels, are recognized and included in decision-making to promote synergies between these functions and reconcile the different objectives of the interested parts. 🇧🇷

Likewise, if we are to fairly assess the relative productivity of small and large farms, we must discard "yield" as our measuring tool. Yield means the yield per unit area of ​​a single crop, such as "metric tons of corn per hectare". Often, the greatest yield from a single crop can be obtained by planting it alone in a single field, in a monoculture, which no longer produces anything useful to the farmer. Bare soil between rows of crops, an ecologically empty "niche space," invites weed infestation. The presence of weeds makes the farmer invest manpower in weeding or capital in herbicides.

Large farmers tend to plant monocultures because they are easier to handle with heavy machinery. Smallholder farmers, on the other hand, especially in the Third World, are much more likely to plant mixed crops (intercrops) where empty niche space that would otherwise produce weeds is occupied by other crops. They also tend to combine or rotate crops and livestock, with manure serving to replenish soil fertility. These integrated farming systems produce much more per unit area than monocultures. Total production per unit area, often made up of more than a dozen crops and various animal products, can be much, much higher. Therefore, if we are going to compare small and large farms, we must use total production rather than yield. While yield almost always came from the bottom line for larger farms, total production allows us to see the true productivity advantage of small farms. In all cases of data examined, relatively small farms are much more productive per unit area (2 to 10 times more productive) than larger ones. There are a variety of explanations for the higher productivity of smallholdings in the Third World, including: multiple cropping; land use intensity; output composition; irrigation; quality of work; work intensity; use of inputs; and resource use.

While small farms are clearly more productive than large farms, it is often argued that large farms are even more efficient. To begin with, this depends on the chosen definition of efficiency. Small farms make more efficient use of the land. Large farms generally have higher labor productivity due to mechanization, so they can be considered more efficient in the use of labor. The most widely accepted definition of efficiency among economists is "total factor productivity," a kind of average efficiency of use of all the different factors that go into production, including land, labor, inputs, and more. , capital, etc. Tomich et al. (1993) provide data from the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s showing that small farms have higher total factor productivity than large farms in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Mexico, and Colombia. In industrialized countries like the United States, the pattern is less clear. The consensus position is probably that very small farms are inefficient because they cannot make full use of expensive equipment, while very large farms are also inefficient because of the administrative and labor problems inherent in large operations. Therefore, maximum efficiency is likely to be achieved on medium-sized farms that have one or two contract workers.

Here in the United States, the question was posed more than half a century ago: what does the growth of large-scale industrial agriculture mean for cities and rural communities? Walter Goldschmidt's classic 1940 study of California's San Joaquin Valley compared areas dominated by large corporate farms with those still characterized by small family farms. In farming communities dominated by large corporate farms, nearby towns have disappeared. Mechanization meant that fewer local people were employed and absentee property meant that peasant families were nowhere to be found. Income earned from agriculture is diverted to larger cities to support distant businesses, while in cities surrounded by family farms, income circulates among local businesses, generating jobs and prosperity for the community. Where family farms dominated, there were more local businesses, paved streets and sidewalks, schools, parks, churches, clubs and newspapers, better services, more jobs, and more civic participation. Studies since Goldschmidt's original work confirm that his discoveries are still true today.

The benefits of smallholdings go beyond the economic sphere. While large industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management (no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures), small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and soil. To begin with, smallholder farmers use a wide range of resources and have an interest in their sustainability. At the same time, their farming systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving important functional biodiversity within the farm. By preserving biodiversity, open space and trees and reducing land degradation, small farms provide valuable ecosystem services to society at large.

If we are concerned with food production, small properties are more productive. If efficiency is our concern, they are more efficient. If our concern is poverty, land reform to create a small farming economy offers a clear solution. The smallholding model is also the surest path to broad-based economic development. Whether we are concerned about the loss of biodiversity or the sustainability of agriculture, small farms provide a crucial part of the solution.

Trade liberalization, the movement towards global free trade policies, poses a serious threat to the continued existence of small farms around the world. Over the past two decades, Third World countries have been encouraged, persuaded, threatened and generally pressured to unilaterally reduce the level of protection offered to their domestic food producers by well-financed foreign competitors. At first glance, this might sound like a good thing. After all, more food imports could make food cheaper in poor and hungry countries and thus make it easier for the poor to get enough to eat. However, the experiences of many countries suggest that there are drawbacks to these policies that may outweigh the potential benefits.

First, a sudden drop in agricultural prices can drive already poor and indebted farmers off the land in the short term. Second, a more subtle effect is activated. As crop prices remain low in the medium term, profits per unit area (per acre) also remain low. This means that it increases the minimum number of hectares needed to support a family, contributing to the abandonment of agricultural land by smaller and poorer farmers, land that ends up in the hands of larger and better-off farmers. price environment by virtue of having many hectares. They overcome the low profit per acre trap precisely by owning vast areas that add up to good total profits, even if they represent very little per acre. The end result of both mechanisms is a greater concentration of agricultural land in the ever-diminishing hands of large farmers.

Agriculture produces not just commodities, but also means of subsistence, cultures, ecological services, etc. and, as such, agricultural products cannot be treated in the same way as other bens. While a shoe, for example, is a relatively simple good whose world price can be set by supply and demand, and whose trade can be regulated through tariffs or deregulated by removing them, the same is not true of agriculture, whose functions are very long. more complex.

Agriculture not only produces/supplies agricultural products, but also contributes to food security, by reducing the risks caused by unforeseen events or possible food shortages in the future, to the preservation of the territory and the environment, to the creation of a good landscape and the maintenance of the local community, through productive activities in harmony with the natural environment. All these roles are known as the "multifunctionality" of agriculture. As an expert in small-scale agricultural production, I fully support this point of view. Ignoring the multiple functions of agriculture has caused untold suffering and ecological destruction in the past. The time has come to recognize the full range of contributions that agriculture, and small farms in particular, make to human societies and the biosphere. Farms are not factories that produce tennis shoes or tennis rackets, and we cannot allow narrow arguments of simple economic convenience to destroy this legacy of all humanity.

doctor Peter M. Rosset, the author, is Executive Director, Food First, The Institute for Food and Development PoliX-Mozilla-Status: 0009 This article is an abstract of a policy brief prepared for "Cultivating Our Futures", FAO / Netherlands Conference on the multifunctional character of agriculture and the land, 12-17 September 1999, Maastricht, The Netherlands.